Steve Fawke, former manager at Broad Street Mall, is accused of stealing more than £3,000 from the centre's accounts

A shopping mall boss who moonlighted as a consultant paid himself a unauthorised fee from the centre coffers, a jury heard today.

Stephen Fawke, of Amazon Close, Basingstoke, said he had carried out consultancy work for a company he later awarded a contract to improve the disabled toilets at the Broad Street Mall .

The 58-year-old then paid himself more than £3,000 from his employers claiming he was owed it by the refurbishment specialists, the court was told on Monday, May 16.

An undated cheque stub that just had a name of a mystery company on was left in the cheque book of the Reading shopping centre. The jury at Reading Crown Court heard the money had been paid into Fawke's account he shared with his wife. Fawke denies a single count of theft on or before April 11, 2012.

Hassan Baig, prosecuting at Reading Crown Court, said Fawke claimed he was owed the £3,245 by a company he employed to carry out refurbishment work and transferred the money into his account to write off the debt. The court heard the £3,245 shortfall was discovered when Fawke left his role and moved on to take over at the Brunel Centre in Swindon.

Mr Baig said during an audit of the Broad Street Mall account after Fawke had left, an "unauthorised credit" to the account he shared with his wife in the sum of £3,245 was discovered.

Mr Baig said that the stub which corresponded to the cheque was undated, but it stated the payment of £3,245 went to a different company, called Felgate.

Fawke, aged 58 years, later told police he was owed the money from the firm he hired to improve the toilets - Elite Management Solutions - for some consultancy work he did with them.

Prosecutor: "He was never entitled to that money, and he knew exactly what was going on."

However the boss of EMS told jurors the consultancy work was completely separate to anything relating to the shopping centre - and he had nothing to do with the missing money.

Mr Baig told the seven women and five men on the jury: "Mr Fawke said he was owed money by EMS. He did some consultant work for them. As a result of being owed money, he asked them for a payment and was told to take the money from the account and they won't bill for that particular amount.

"What the Crown anticipate the defendant to say is he was entitled to that money and he had got that in the course of his business, as a second job with EMS. It's the Crown's case he was never entitled to that money, and he knew exactly what was going on."

EMS had won the contract to improve the disabled toilets at the Broad Street Mall in 2012.

On Monday, David Brown, director of EMS, denied making a separate payment to Fawke. He told the jury he did use Fawke's business expertise in a consultancy capacity when he was setting up a cleaning company, and would pay him for this. However he stopped this when he employed somebody as a consultant on a full-time basis.

Mr Brown told the jury these payments would be made via cheque or a BACS transfer straight to Fawke's account. He was allowed to make payments in this manner to a third party.

Referring to Fawke's consultancy work with EMS, Mr Brown said: "We treated it as a totally separate operation - it wasn't anything that we did with Broad Street Mall, as far as we were concerned."

He explained to the jury any official invoices for work - for payments EMS had to make, or were owed money for - would be handled by Lloyds TSB, who the company banked with. Mr Brown said that all money relating to any invoices was handled by the bank

Under cross examination from Christopher Blake, defending Fawke, Mr Brown said he was "100 per cent sure" there were no additional cash payments made to the defendant. He added he would be "in hot water" if he did this, as it broke the terms of the contract he signed with Lloyds.

Mr Blake suggested the payment of £3,245 was made as part of a larger invoice involving work he did for Fawke. Mr Blake said it was "impossible for us to do anything out of our parameters".

Mr Brown said his company records from 2012 were stored on a computer that had not been backed up, but he said it would be possible to see all his firm's financial transactions from looking at bank statements.